Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my business need Business Intelligence?

To create visibility of the business performance
Provide end users with:

user friendly reports
ability to do root-cause analysis
answer ad-hoc business questions
Trend Information
Multiple views of the data
Drill down to transaction level
Ready to analyse reports and not spend most of their time compiling information

My accounting system has 50 standard reports. Surely that's good enough?

All ERP or accounting systems come with standard reports. The reports however were not written with your business in mind and contain static views of the data and normally don't answer the business questions that you will have.

They're inflexible and to answer a new business question normally requires a programmer to design a new reports which normally tales a long time to develop. Once you have that report you will invariably have more business questions coming from what is presented and the cycle starts again.

Business Intelligence however puts the analytical power in the business user's hands and 1 BI report (with slicing & dicing, drill down, trends, other graphics and filtering) will answer millions of business questions.

We live in the information age where we are constantly bombarded with information and the pace of business demands that users process information quickly.

What are the differences between Performance Management Systems and Process Management Systems?

Performance Management
•    Sets goals and displays progress on dashboards
•    Sets measures and targets per goal
•    Review actual KPIs vs. Targets by Team ( Company, Branch, Department etc) or individual
•    Great for alignment and getting everyone delivering the business strategy
•    Quicker to deploy
•    Great for the MD to lead the organisation

Process Management
•    Map Flowcharts
•    Set measures and targets for each process (Which is linked to a team and/or individual)
•    Review actual KPIs vs. targets by process and then by team or individual
•    More operational – shows people what the job is and how to do it in order to please the customer (internal or external)
•    Is richer and also has the benefit of creating slicker and better customer service
•    Is great for "Heads of Department" to get on top of and improve their work
..